This eared grebe is currently in Marquette. (Scot Stewart photo)

“Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.” — Carol Bishop Hipps

The shift from the start of Autumn to October always seems too abrupt, too short. October in the Upper Peninsula can mean snow in the first ten days. Usually it’s a quick, messy snow that does not last, it sticks to golden maple leaves and droopy birch branches. Sometimes, like this year, it’s a delightful lazy stretch of warm weather.

Marquette’s Lower Harbor has had some interesting visitors this past week with the warm weather. Starting last Saturday, an eared grebe appeared near the breakwall on the harbor side. Because they are smaller waterbirds, they are difficult to see until relatively close to them even with binoculars. Last year another grebe showed up near the U.S. Coast Station in the Lower Harbor the end of the third week of October and stayed several weeks often with horned grebes and red-necked grebes.

Eared grebes are very common in the western U.S. and Canada but only rarely roam east of the Mississippi during migration. Their summer range does extend into a few parts of western Minnesota and Iowa, but they are only seen occasionally, but usually each year in Michigan.

Eared grebes are distinguished by their reddish eyes, adapted for diving, black and brown bodies, and a flash of golden feathers extending back from their eyes to their necks. Like many birds, these bright marking are lost in the fall as they molt to colors better served for blending in and going unnoticed. The grebe in Marquette this week arrived still with most of its breeding plumage but appeared to be changing over noticeably each day.

Eared grebes have some of the strangest behaviors of all birds according to Cornell’s All about Birds feature about them, https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eared_Grebe/overview#. When they leave their summer nesting colonies in the Central Plains and the Rocky Mountains, nearly all of them head to either Great Salt Lake in Utah or Mono Lake in eastern California. Up to 2.5 million grebes can gather on Great Salt Lake at a time. At these two lakes they will gorge on brine shrimp, doubling their weight and becoming flightless as their digestive systems swell and their breast muscles shrink. The process reverses itself before they take off and head for the Southwestern U.S., Mexico, and parts of Central America. Their binging behavior can repeat up to six times leaving them flightless up to ten months of the year. Because they linger so long feeding of brine shrimp each fall they are among the last birds to reach their winter range.

Eared grebes have another interesting behavior to warm themselves on cool mornings. They may face away from the sun, lift their tails to expose a patch of dark skin to the sunlight.

Another nice bird to find in the Lower Harbor this week has been a surf scoter. A large diving duck, it also has dark plumage, has been in close to shore near the Coast Guard station and Mattson Park. Surf scoters have very bright white, orange, and black bills to go with a glossy black bodies during breeding season, but also fade to nondescript winter plumage. Summer residents in northern Canada and Alaska, they are now headed to the ocean coasts for winter.

Whitefish Point continues with marvels again this migration season. Early on the premier appearances came from the 5000+ red-necked grebes that migrate through each fall. Recently though, their numbers were eclipsed by nearly 15,000 pine siskins, flying through and over in flocks the past few weeks. Observations are showing large numbers – in the 1000’s, of siskins flying southward across the country, already this fall.

It is out! The 25th Annual Winter Finch Forecast 2023 was released last Sunday by Tyler Hoar in Ontario. The annual report features status reports of tree fruit and seed crops across Canada this year and offers predictions of bird movements in response to winter food supplies. Surprisingly, little mention is made of the effects of this year’s forest fires across the country, but in general conditions reflect dry regional weather with good crops in Alaska and eastern Canada and poorer crops are found as one travels to the center of Canada. Good mountain ash crops in Canada (and in the central Upper Peninsula) will probably keep most pine grosbeaks and bohemian waxwings close to their summer ranges over the winter. However, west of Lake Superior mountain ash crops were not as good, so some waxwings and grosbeaks may wander south and if they drift eastward, could make it to the Upper Peninsula.

Conifer crops though are not as good, and pine siskins, red and white-winged crossbills should and are making their way south. Whitefish Point continues to prove siskins are already on the move. 760 were seen last Monday and 190 more were counted this past Tuesday. Because spruce and birch crops have been poor, purple finches, common redpolls are all expected to show up south of Lake Superior in noticeable numbers during the colder months. Good production of alder cones has been found this fall in Canada, but the finches and redpolls may move this way later in the winter, and some hoary redpolls are expected to be seen with the common redpolls.

With the days ahead still promising summer-like weather resulting in messy forecasts, messy closets filled with a confusing mix of summer, fall, and winter clothes, and a perplexing set of decisions about where to go and enjoy a gorgeous start to Autumn!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Scot Stewart is naturalist at the MooseWood Nature Center, a writer and photographer.